Category Archives: Theodore (Ted) Roosevelt

Women’s History Month at the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace

07 Saturday Mar 2020

Posted by in Abraham Lincoln, Incorporating New York (book manuscript project), Theodore (Ted) Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace (NPS), Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), Theodore Roosevelt Sr (Father)

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If you are looking for something to do in recognition of Women’s History Month in the coming weeks I might suggest the above programs at the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace on these successive Saturdays. A guy with my initials even goes off on the 21st.

These past few weeks I have been pulling together my presentation, which focuses on the Roosevelt family’s response to the American Civil War. Young Teedie’s parents supported different sides during the conflict. His mother Mittie was a Georgia belle from a slave-owning family with a brother and several half-brothers in Confederate uniform; Theodore Roosevelt Sr. was a Union man, a friend of Abraham Lincoln’s personal secretary John Hay, who had his mail sent to the White House in care of Hay while out in the field registering men of the Army of the Potomac up for the allotment of their pay to their families back home. I tell the story in more detail in the manuscript of “Incorporating New York,” my history of Civil War Era New York City that will hopefully get published sometime in the future.

There is a rich assortment of speakers lined up for the house on East 20th Street in the coming weeks. Come out and take part in Women’s History Month in these waning days of winter.

Mrs. Roosevelt’s 1918 Christmas Eve

24 Monday Dec 2018

Posted by in Quentin Roosevelt, Theodore (Ted) Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President)

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Eleanor Butler Alexander Roosevelt, Ted Roosevelt’s wife, seen here in center holding knitting, as she was in France during the Great War. On Christmas Eve 1918 she was back in New York City and talking to the media of the work she and others did with the Y.M.C.A. in France.

In December 1918, weeks after the Armistice, Americans were arriving back in the United States, often on such massive transport ships as the Leviathan carrying as many as 9,000 doughboys. It was not just the men however. On December 16, 1918 the Lorraine arrived in New York Harbor carrying Mrs. Anne Harriman Vanderbilt, Mrs. Vincent Astor, a noticeably gaunt Scottish soprano Mary Garden, and Eleanor Butler Alexander Roosevelt, Ted Roosevelt’s wife. It was a difficult time for the Roosevelt family. Quentin had been killed that past July, and the other boys gravely wounded at different times during the war with physical and emotional injuries from which they would never entirely recover. Eleanor’s father-in-law, former president Theodore Roosevelt, had been failing for some time and was quite infirm by this time. He had spent almost all of the past two months in the hospital.

Eight days after her arrival Mrs. Roosevelt was again settled in to her and Ted’s home on East 74th Street. Her husband was still in France with the First Infantry Division. On Christmas Eve 1918 Mrs. Roosevelt gave an interview at the Upper East Side house to expand on, and even defend from some doubters, the work of the Y.M.C.A. that she and so many others had conducted during the war.

(image/New York Times)

The funeral of General Ted Roosevelt, July 14, 1944

14 Saturday Jul 2018

Posted by in Film, Sound, & Photography, Quentin Roosevelt, Theodore (Ted) Roosevelt, WW2

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General Theodore Roosevelt funeral, July 14, 1944

For reasons that I and others have discussed today, July 14 is an important date in Roosevelt family history. Less well-known than the fact that Quentin was killed in France on Bastille Day 1918 is that General Ted Roosevelt was buried on this day in 1944. General Theodore Roosevelt died of a heart attack in France on July 12, five weeks after landing on the beaches of Normandy. I would go more into the story of General Roosevelt’s burial but we already have the narrative as told by the photographer who took the images we see above and below. PFC Sidney Gutelewitz happened to have his camera on his person when he saw Omar Bradley, George Patton and at least four more (other article say at least eight more) generals marching solemnly in the funeral. As Gutelewitz tell it, he did not know it was the funeral of General Roosevelt for another decade. Thankfully the images survived. The photographer turned them over to the United States Army Center of Military History.

General Omar Bradley attends the funeral of General Theodore Roosevelt, July 14, 1944. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle said: “The funeral procession was awe-inspiring for its solemnity and military simplicity.”

One note: many articles discussing Mr. Gutelewitz and his photographs have the funeral as happening in July 13, 1944, To the best of my knowledge–and I researched it pretty closely to check the discrepency–that is almost certainly incorrect. All of the contemporary accounts I read and watched have the funeral as happening on the evening of July 14. It is a lesson in always checking these types of details and not taking them at face value. Apparently twenty-six images of the funeral exist. I have only seen 5-6 online. Maybe next year they will do more with this for the seventy-fifth anniversary of General Roosevelt’s death.

(images/US Army Pfc. Sidney Gutelewitz)

Sunday morning coffee

04 Sunday Mar 2018

Posted by in Theodore (Ted) Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace (NPS), WW1

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Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace, East 20th Street

I spent the day yesterday pounding out a small project that will hopefully see the light of day sometime this month. I don’t want to say too much about it right now, but I will say here that it is about the Roosevelt Birthplace on East 20th Street. It came out to about 900 words. Again, it is a low stakes projects. Little things like this though can be a lot of fun. There are so many good stories to tell. I will keep everyone up to date.

Once I finish the book manuscript, I intend to do something about the development of Roosevelt House as a cultural institution. The story is a more interesting one than people realize. Roosevelt died in January 1919 when the troops were coming home from Europe. The world was seemingly at peace but actually in turmoil. Much of the world was gathering in Paris for the peace negotiations. That summer was the Red Scare and the race riots here in America, and chaos and starvation abroad. The Russian Revolution was going on, and soon that country would be in civil war. Theodore Roosevelt was gone by the time all this happened, but that was the milieu in which the Roosevelt Memorial and Woman’s Roosevelt Memorial Associations went about the work of rebuilding the house in the early 1920s. The founders of the site saw it as a center for promoting patriotism and for fending off the world’s ills in what was an uncertain time. It is very much an untold story and I think there is a lot to go on here.

 

Ethel Roosevelt Derby, 1891-1977

09 Saturday Dec 2017

Posted by in Theodore (Ted) Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace (NPS), Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), Those we remember, WW1

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They have my article about Ethel Roosevelt Derby up over at Roads to the Great War. Theodore Roosevelt’s younger daughter died on 10 December 1977, forty years ago this week. Ethel was vey much her father’s daughter and lived a long, full life. Of all the pieces I have written, this was one of the most enjoyable and meaningful to write.

(image/Library of Congress)

Discovering Grosvenor Phillips Cather

09 Thursday Nov 2017

Posted by in Great War centennial, Memory, Theodore (Ted) Roosevelt

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A clip from the 25 June 1918 New York Times article mentioning Lieutenant Cather’s death at Cantigny. Cather served under Ted Roosevelt in the 26th Infantry Regiment.

We wrapped up the second of our two sections yesterday for the Library of America World War One module with two English classes. I will have more on that in future posts but for now wanted to share a small part of it. For the module students read excerpts from The Library of America anthology “World War I and America.” One of the readings was itself an excerpt from “Roll Call on the Prairies,” a piece that Willa Cather wrote for The Red Cross Magazine in July 1919. In my prep work for the session I learned that the novelist had a cousin who was killed in the Great War. This turned out to be one Lieutenant Grosvenor Phillips (G.P.) Cather. I did a bit more digging and it turns out that Lieutenant Cather was killed at the Battle of Cantigny on 28 May 1918.

I intend to do a deeper dive on G.P. Cather next spring on the 100th anniversary of his death. With the classes still fresh on my mind however, I wanted to share a few details about the young officer. Cather not only served in the Great War but fought in the First Infantry Division. Even wilder it turns out that Lieutenant Cather served not only in the Big Red One, but in the 26th Regiment under the command of Major Theodore (Ted) Roosevelt Jr. Major Roosevelt was gassed at Cantigny and the following month received the Silver Star for his actions there. Cather was not so fortunate and was one scores of Americans killed on the 28th of May 1918. He was posthumously award a Silver Star and Distinguished Service Cross. Lieutenant Cather was buried in France but  re-interred in Nebraska in the early 1920s. His cousin never forgot him. Willa Cather used her G.P. as the inspiration for her novel One of Hours, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923. Again, I will have more on this next spring but for now wanted to share this brief vignette.

(image/New York Times)

Two Roosevelts crossing the Atlantic

24 Saturday Jun 2017

Posted by in Archibald (Archie) Roosevelt, Governors Island, J. Franklin Bell (General), Theodore (Ted) Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President)

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Archibald and Theodore (Ted) Roosevelt Jr. left for France on 20 June 1917.

Theodore Roosevelt spoke from the pulpit of the Oyster Bay Reformed Church at Brookville on Sunday 24 June 1917 on behalf of the Red Cross. Raising funds and awareness for that relief organization was not his only reason to take to the podium however; with sons Archibald and Theodore now crossing the Atlantic aboard the Chicago to join Pershing’s nascent forces, he could announce that the boys had indeed left American soil. By June it apparent that the Wilson Administration, wisely, was not going to let Roosevelt command a division in France. The Colonel was committed, quite publicly, to sending his sons, so much so that he pulled all the strings he could get his sons to Europe as quickly as possible.

That became a reality when the Chicago left New York for Bordeaux on Wednesday 20 June. The late spring of 1917 had entailed a great deal of back and forth for Archive and Ted. They had spent the past several weeks getting in some final training in Plattsburg before traveling ceaselessly between New York City, Washington, and Oyster Bay as their fate was being decided. Eventually the War Department sent secret orders directing them to report to General J. Franklin Bell on Governors Island. It was there at the Department of the East that they received their final instructions. They had a few more days to pass before the passage of the Chicago and so went back to Long Island to say their final goodbyes to their families. Then it was back to New York. The waiting to go overseas was finally over.

Theodore Roosevelt had been an advocate for American involvement in the Great War since 1914. When he spoke at the Oyster Bay reformed Church one hundred years ago today, he had a personal stake in the conflict that was not there even one week prior.

(image/New York Times)

The cook and his men

26 Friday May 2017

Posted by in Quote of the day, Theodore (Ted) Roosevelt

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One of the many advertisements soliciting bakers and cooks in the early months of America’s entry in the war.

One does not find it in the drill-book that the way to keep coffee and slum hot after it left the rolling kitchens is to take out the boilers with the food in them, wrap these boilers in old blankets, put them on the two-wheeled machine-gun carts, which can go nearly anywhere, and work forward to the troops in this way. This is just one instance, one trick of the trade. It is something that only training and experience can supply, and yet it is of most vital importance. I have known divisions to help feed the more recently arrived divisions on their right and left, when all have the same facilities to start with. I have known new troops, fighting by an older division, to be forty hours without food when men of the older division had been eating every day.

–Lieutenant Colonel Theodore (Ted) Roosevelt, Jr.
Average Americans, 1919

(image/Library of Congress)